Born in 1902, Nicolás Guillén is almost as old as this century. A flourish of publishing activity occurred in 1972 and again in 1982 celebrating his longevity. Few writers who began as Modernists are still alive to tell about the movement, as does Guillén in his memoirs, Páginas vueltas (published in Havana in 1982 in honor of his eightieth birthday). After a long and distinguished career in poetry, journalism, and politics, Cuba's national poet is becoming increasingly visible in the English-speaking world, where his candidacy for the Nobel prize for literature is encouraged annually and books, articles, dissertations, bibliographies, and translations of his work continue to appear.

Todo genuino movimiento literario, todo amanecer, toda ruptura, ha tenido indefectiblemente su primera exteriorización en las hojas provocativas de una revista. La revista descubre, polemiza; el escritor de revistas anticipa, es el guerrillero madrugado, el pionero que zampa terrenos intactos. La revista es vitrina y es cartel. El libro ya es en cierto modo un ataúd, quizás más duradero y más perfecto, pero menos jugoso y vital.

Sources enabling scholars to recreate the complexity and texture of daily life in historical Buenos Aires are extremely valuable. In the past, descriptions by visitors to the city, occasional articles in contemporary newspapers, and some government reports have provided glimpses of life in nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. Now the documents recently made available by the Archivo Histórico de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires are adding tremendously to knowledge of the period and therefore deserve special attention. A depository for documents dealing with city government, the Archivo has gathered thousands of items dealing with the day-to-day administration of Buenos Aires between 1856 and 1909. These documents are an important, yet unexploited, source of information on every facet of daily life affected by the government. Anyone interested in the history of Buenos Aires during the half-century preceding World War I will be richly rewarded by a visit to this archive.

Liberty was in their hearts, but the old bondage was nevertheless perpetuated in their habits and, moreover, they were not united among themselves. Juan Bautista Alberdi

A number of recent publications have added to our knowledge of the century in which Argentina seems to have been transformed from a traditional colonial society into a modern and prosperous nation. Most of these new studies lean toward socioeconomic and sociopolitical analysis, testimony to the influence of Tulio Halperin Donghi's work on the Independence period and James Scobie's work on Buenos Aires. Because these two studies of the mid-1970s are so well known, this article will review only the literature that has appeared since. All modern scholars agree that the economy since 1820 expanded at least in the littoral region and that the century ended in an upsurge of technological innovation and export-led growth that extended even into the interior. Most also concur that the benefits of economic progress were not shared equally. The critical questions seem to be who got what and why?